The cachet of “organic” for the sustainability-minded — in food, fertilizer, apparel, and so on — only goes so far.

Organic solar cells, alas, have an abysmally low efficiency rate. They are solar collectors comprising crystals that include the organic chemicals of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and so on.

The good news is that somebody is still studying organic crystals anyway, and that commercial interests haven’t commandeered all scientific research. Besides, who knows when when organic crystals might have a practical application we can’t even imagine today?

Daniel Burrill, a graduate student in physics at the University of Vermont, is one of those researchers, and one of about 300 students who showed posters or made presentations Wednesday at UVM’s annual student research conference in the Davis Center. His project’s title: “A Density Functional Study of Spin Exchange in Dilute 1D Metal Phthalocyanine Chains.”

Some of the other projects were similarly esoteric: “Analysis of DNA Glycosylase Variants by Means of Rifampicin Assay,” for example, or “The Effect of RU-486 on the Ability of Prior Stress to Interfere with the Anxiolytic Properties of Exercise in Mice.”

Plenty of projects were readily accessible to a visitor of minimal scientific literacy, however. One study found that colleges with men’s basketball teams making their initial appearance in the NCAA’s Final Four experienced a surge in applications, and as a result, were able to become more selective, accepting students with higher SAT scores.

Emily Peterson, a sophomore, mapped the distribution of red foxes in Central Mongolia. No, she didn’t go to Mongolia — her professor got to do that. Instead, she analyzed satellite photos of Mongolian terrain and ascribed probabilities of the animal’s presence in various habitats. Given that the red fox is verging on “threatened” status in Mongolia, she said, those are the sorts of data that might be useful in managing wildlife there. The state of wildlife management in central Mongolia might be worth another research project altogether.

Of the projects with local interest, at least one came with a counter intuitive conclusion. Stephanie Roque, a graduate student in dietetics, studied the impact of the federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program on 16 Vermont elementary schools and found that many pupils in those schools were more averse to trying new vegetables, or at least they said they were. Roque was quick to offer a caveat, that the research had “gaps.”

“I do think the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program is a very valuable program,” she said.

Yet another deleterious effect of cyanobacteria — the micro-organisms associated with blue-green algae blooms — was indicated by a study of water and fish samples from Missisquoi and Malletts bays. Fish in areas with more concentrated blooms were found to have lower levels of essential fatty acids. That could reduce the reproductive capacity of these fish, said Katherine Ritchie, a senior who participated in the project.

Al Powell, a senior, took it upon himself to redesign Burlington’s fabled Southern Connector with three roundabouts in lieu of traffic signals. He picked a good time to do it — the roadway is nearly half a century old in conception but still contested and still on the drawing board, at least to the extent that it’s not shovel-ready yet.

Powell’s research affirmed the superiority of roundabouts in terms of safety (much lower pedestrian and vehicular accident rates, as measured at the several thousand roundabouts in the United States and Canada). He projected that drivers would spend 3 ½ minutes longer in traffic during rush hour if the Connector is built with traffic signals. Roundabouts, he concluded, would lead to fuel savings.

Asked about the rush-hour traffic backups in Winooski, he suggested that was not a fair comparison. Winooski has a significantly higher traffic volume, he said, and the circle there — with its pedestrian crossing light and other adaptations — isn’t a genuine roundabout.